September 2015

The Force Awakens

I got a Kylo Ren (back center in pic), this week. He's the bad guy (one assumes?) in the upcoming Star Wars VII. Very nice figure and one of the better uses of soft goods mixed with plastic I've seen in a 6" mass market figure.

I have no idea if this picture is out of line or not, and won't know what Kylo Ren has to do with anyone until the movie. But I thought this would be a fun grouping of figures for now.

I also fired up the 3D printer for the first time in a little bit and made a BB-8 to go with my Finn. There is an official BB-8 figure but it's a pack-in accessory to the Rey action figure, which I didn't care much for the sculpt or paint of, and I hated to spend full price on the figure just to get little BB-8 droid. There was a nice file someone uploaded to Thingiverse, so I printed one and painted him this evening. Not as nice as the store bought, but he works from a distance. And he'll make a nice stand in until an eventual clearance sale on the real thing perhaps.

The problems with #1. 360 Video.
a. It's video but more expensive to create
b. most of the time the interesting thing is happening right in front of the camera, no need to see behind the camera, so why 360 instead of 2D?
c. Multiple cameras are interesting, we have the technology for that already, but we do nothing with it. This lack of interest doesn't bode well for giving viewers camera control by way of VR.
d. It's mostly novel in the same way as Google Street view. Everyone is going to agree it;s cool, but how much of your day do you spend in Google Street View.

The problems with #2. 360 CGI Virtual Reality
a. It's basically just a 2D video game that uses turning your head as a controler in place of a joypad thumbstick
b. you can't sit on a couch and comfortably look behind yourself
c. standing, so you can look in any direction, is tiring after a very short time
d. with any motion to the video, it's going to be nauseating for most people, as what the eyes see, won't match up with what the body feels.

The problems with both.
a. It's like video, it's "real time". There's unlikely to be good skimming tools, so you are watching video/chatting/experiencing in realtime. And people over the age of 22 and especially people with children, have a finite amount of time for video experiences.
b. It's as of yet hard to share and experience with others, I'm sure they could solve this, but I doubt they are going to have systems in place to locally sync 4 to 6 of these devices to the same experience anytime soon.
c. It's expensive. Even at $99, you also need a $600 phone to go with it. So $700. That's $2,800 for a family of 4. That's pricey.
d. If you solve the syncing of multiple headsets together, it's still realtime, so people have to get together at the same time, it's not going to have the asynchronous strengths of email/messaging/chat.

Still it's cool.

I just think VR Video is going to languish until 360 VR video gets real easy/cheap for Jane Doe to shoot and host online. VR Video games might get a nice niche going for people with strong constitutions who can handle the quesieness, but for group play I bet a person with a good standard controller will still out perform a person with a VR headset and the hardcore players will prefer to stick to a traditional experience.

Time is finite, time spent in VR experiences will need to be time not spent in other experiences. VR is probably just going to cut into Youtube/Periscope viewing time. Mobile phone was unique in that it gave people more time, they could use apps and experience media in places that people previously would have been limited to quiet contemplation or at best a paperback or Newspaper. Because VR can't make available more time like mobile did, it's not the same next "huge" thing.

Driverless cars can create more time, but that's a rant for a different day, and they are much farther out than VR in anycase.

Random Action Figure Pick-ups

Last weekend picked up the TMNT, Napolean Bonafrog, Napolean Dynamite parody character from the current TV series. Cute episode, cute character. Limited articulation, but for the kid friendly prices of these figures you can't complain.

A week or two back I picked up the Pirana Plant in store, to go with Mario. This Nintendo line of small figures is really fun, I wish I was more into the games represented, just to have an excuse to get more of these delightful little toys.

Added a Zoe to my Firefly grouping. Wash and Kaylee are also pretty cheap right now, but so far I've been content to "leave them on the ship" as it were and just stick to this Away team grouping.

Picked up a cheap Cortana about a month or so back. With Cortana taking center stage in Windows 10 and being added to Xbox One in a couple months, seemed like a good time to get this clearanced Halo figure.

Disturbances in the Force

Picked up a 6" Emporer a week or two ago. Nice figure, much robes.

Tried taking a picture of it in front of my Chromebook monitor. Works ok. Some glare, but better than it was in front of glossy TV.

Saw a 6" Force Awaken's Rey in store today. Not a great looking figure, bummer that it is the only way right now to get BB8 though. Maybe after all the collector hype dies down it'll go real cheap/clearance, because it'd be nice to have the droid, but not worth the price given how meh the Rey figure is.

Haven't seen Kylo Ren at a store yet. Have seen lots of Chewies though.

Went in Walgreen's today. Nice fall reset of their Toy aisle. For a short run, they've got a killer selection of stuff. I saw all most all the latest Avengers wave in store today. Already have the two figures I wanted from that wave, but it's the first time I've seen them in stores, and Kudos to Walgreen's for being right in the lead of the pack in 6" collector stuff now.

Saw the Star Wars seasonal section in Target today too. Not sure if it was up last week, or likely, I just didn't think to go over to the seasonal area. They did up Star Wars like it was a holiday. Lots of neat retro styled printed tees for the whole family too. Cool stuff.

Other Randomness

Still bumming about the lack of quality tech news lately and how badly most of the major sites are dropping the ball on the topic lately.

Twitter feels a little too high noise to signal for me lately. I might do a culling of my main feed or at least move some different people/accounts into some categories to help me segment it better.

I also yesterday unfriended someone in Facebook just to eliminate a heavy flood of offbase crazy conservative posts. To some extent I like to keep some people I disagree with in my feeds, but in this case, since I know the person, more often than not it was just too annoying to see backwards error filled Fox News fueled opinions every other post and knowing it was just going to get worse going into the next Presidential election cycle, I finally snapped and removed this person. She almost never posted anything personal actually about herself anyway.

Digging the new Colbert Late Show even though, since it's 5 hours a week now instead of the old show's four 30 min runtime, it seems like a much larger time commitment each week.

I'm pretty much ready to drop the Nightly Show. It was mostly the inertia of it being in the Colbert Time Slot that carried it this far with me. It's just too inconsistent in quality and idealogy for me. I'm hoping that The New Daily Show in a couple weeks will be stronger.

First really nice cool fall feeling day today. And I really digged it. The next 8 weeks or so are probably my favorite for Michigan.

New season of Longmire exclusively on Netflix a couple nights ago. Like the show, glad it was picked up. But it's an episodic with mixed in occasional arc episodes, and for me that's a hard format to binge watch. (Not that we binge watch much with the baby right now.) The serial/continuing style shows are much easier to binge watch I think. Looking forward to working thru the episodes of it over the next month or two though.

The Force Awakens

Last week on "Force Friday" I ordered a 6" Finn action figure. These 6" figures have, for the most part, sold out everywhere in stores and online.

So it's cool I got one, I guess.

The figure itself is nice. It looks like the actor, sculpt and paint detail is nice.

Of course, I have no idea if I'll like the character for another 3 months, which is when the movie comes out. It's a little weird to buy figures for characters you know nothing about, which is pretty much why I stopped at one figure from this movie, so far.

Based on looks, Kylo Ren and Rey/BB8 would also be figures I'd likely get. General Huck looks very cool as a figure too. And while Poe might be a good core character, I'm not that interested in another X-Wing flight suit figure. There's also 4 different Storm Troopers, a Resistence Trooper and a weird looking Constable character. Some others two. 4 different wave between now and the movie. Really until the movie comes out, who knows which of these would be worth owning in plastic.

Apple Event

Well done enough event today. Nothing terribly really exciting.

The Apple Pencil, stylus, is neat, but iPad still not a full computer, so it is of limited use. The Apple Pencil will be better, most likely, when it works with some of the smaller, future iPads, instead of the more expensive iPad Pro that it currently only works with.

As it stands, it's a lot of money to basically hobby sketch. The Surface seems to be a better choice to actually use for Art. And a dedicated Cintiq/or Cintiq clone for desktop is still your best art bet.

The new iPhones are nice if you are on that track. I'm an Android phone guy, but if I was looking to upgrade to an iPhone, these 6Ses with the 3D touch and the camera improvements probably wouldn't disapoint. Nice step up from last year. With the iOS 9, they probably could have called these iPhone 7s and no one would have complained.

AppleTV. Basically, the new AppleTV looks like the current AppleTV + a souped up Ouya with a really nice processor. Controller is nicer for tv, but looks meh for gaming.

More politely put, this new Apple TV seems more like a screenless iPad for your TV. I'll probably a wait and see. If interesting software hits it, then maybe, but out of the gate, doesn't seem like an urgent upgrade for the $199 cost the 64GB one that would be prudent to buy.

I'm not big into games, and we have an Xbox One already that has nice TV functions on the big TV. Our older AppleTV sits attached to a smaller living room TV. Not sure what apps, I'd want to have on it?

Screensavers come to mind, iCloud photos, mixed with headlines, twitter and maybe facebook posts? dunno, Chromecast's backdrop does some of that already. AppleTV, looks to have some nice sports features if you pay for MLB subscriptions and things like that. AppleTV might be even better when they rollout a more comprehensive network cable tv cord cutter service in the future.

Siri on the Apple TV sounds nice, but Xbox One has done a little of that for awhile, so it's not completely new.

They opened with a recap of the previous WatchOS 2 stuff, which looked nice if you have one of those and an iPhone. Since I don't have an iPhone, no iWatch in my future either.

It was a long event. They had Microsoft on stage presenting with them at one point. That was weird. Really weird, did not feel right to have those two sharing the same stage.

Ignore the hate

There's two phrases/ideas that have been bugging me lately. It's probably a generational thing to some extent too.

Promote what you love, instead of bashing what you hate.

and this one is a little less meme-like, but the below somes up the sentiment:

Remember that the strongest way to support something you love is to BUY it. Even if someone sends you a book for free, vote with your dollar.

The second I might see more than you if you don't follow alot of artist or creative types, but it's something that is stongly associated with the first.

You know how you look at some older generations above X and they can seem a little intolerant and maybe racist at times? But they don't realize it? Sometimes I feel like my strong negative reaction to the above two sentiments is probably a little of that for my generation for those younger than me.

I feel like there's a utility to pointing out the negative that seems lost on the fastly becoming not youth anymore of today. So as that cultural wave of positivity pulls my generation's snark under like a riptide, I can kind of feel an analagous vibe to the old people who are so left behind by Political Correctness, that they are willing to see Trump as their voice.

It'll be interesting to see what Seinfeldian type actor becomes my generation's Trump in 10 years, but I digress.

Be positive, at worst subtweet your enemies or things you hate, but never directly come out and confront something you hate. It makes you seem negative, and not a team player, rude for sure. The thought seems to be, everyone might know the sucky thing sucks, but it's not a good idea to be all loud about it and point it out. Afterall who wants all that negativity in their feed, and that sucky thing you are trying to kill might be someone's livelihood, and in today's economy, why would you be so inconsiderate as to actively sabatoge the thing someone is trying to make a buck at?

Celebrate the positive, ignore the neagtive.

Sounds good. But, and I might just be showing my age here, I don't like it.

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad